The War of Elevens| Book 1 of the Space Thief Chronicles

Chapter 15| Rat Circus

That first week was a lot like the first day, minus the trying-to-kill-Max part.

Sergeant Josey screamed at the Privates during attention drills after breakfast. Instructor Kamaria worked their muscles so hard that, by the fourth day, Lilly couldn't get up without wincing. Even with nightly showers and lots of deodorant, the stench of sweat and body odor became so common that people eventually stopped turning their nose up at the effluvia taking over the Private dormitory and no longer made fun of anyone else for smelling sour.

During the magical instruction periods, Lilly simply moved her hands the way the other Privates were taught. She learned about magical defenses and watched other people construct trees from their wrists or produce smoke from their knuckles. Because she wasn't learning about magical powers, the instructors taught her about knife-wielding and melee attacks. She practiced on dummies and sometimes with the instructors themselves.

All the Privates in Elliott Way quickly agreed that Instructor Stevia's period was the absolute worst—and that included conditioning. Stevia thought that teaching her trainees to fight their way through painful situations was particularly important, so before she started her lessons on the dynamics of magic, she moved down the lineup of Privates, drew a blade an inch or so along the soft flesh of their palms, and dug the tip deep between the thumb and forefinger. She told them to count the seconds until the pain eased and assured them with a smirk she was building their pain tolerance.

When Lilly was finished with her instruction periods for the day, she wandered to the training room with the ceiling full of crossbeams to sit with Zander. They sat in silence, their legs dangling from the metal. The only other time Zander had spoken was their second day at Elliott Way. Wyx had brought her a stack of dusty old books about the Shifter World and its history from some deep, dark, unused corner of the facility earlier that morning. Lilly brought them to read in their hour of silence together, and Zander had said, "I like to read."

She gave him half the stack of books, and they read together.

The Shifter World's history was about as complicated as Earth's. Fairies, goblins, trolls, ogres, elves, pixies, and other humanoid creatures without Shifter magic were a race called the Fae; they lived among Shifters but had their own government—a hidden monarchy whose regime was a mystery to Shifters. The Acids, another race, had underground cities in southern Té Shezekia and Arabilst-Ari. From what Lilly had read, the Acid government was a despicable group of nine old men and women who decapitated children for crimes and strung men up on spits like pigs for committing treason. Lilly desperately hoped that most of these depictions were Shifter propaganda.

Each night, after she practiced stealing giant glowing flowers and starlight in the darkness of her room, Wyx quizzed her on the Shifter World.

"Why do Acids hate Shifters?" he asked one night.

"After Storm rebelled against the Bloom, Acids thought they could be the dominant race," Lilly replied, hanging upside down from her bed. That was the one factoid that sent chills down her spine. No wonder the Bloom despised Shifters without normal fire, water, or earth powers...after Storm, the Acids thought they could overthrow the government, just like Storm. Acids wanted equal representation in the Bloom. The Bloom refused with a claim that said Acids were subhuman and Shifters and Acids were like spiders in a jar—they couldn't coexist. The Acids sent fluoroantimonic-filled rockets—one of the most powerful in the world that could turn the human body into a thick soup of burned internal organs and corroded bones—raining over cities and kidnapped Shifter children in protest, and the Bloom retaliated by killing all nine of the Acid council members.

The cycle was endless, endless. 

"But why would I want to fight on the side of the Bloom?" Lilly asked, disgusted. "Why would I fight for a government that calls people subhuman? That's racist. I don't want to fight a war for racists."